Wednesday 24 October 2012

Tentacle Bento is here!!! Oishii ^o^

   
    

I feel like I ought to have some ridiculously cutesy characters, or emoticons to dot around the place. Instead I have two limited edition miniatures, some posters, some foil cards, a bento box and a T-shirt. Oh and my copy of Tentacle Bento.  Here are some pictures for those of you who I know are still waiting for their stuff to turn up:



Yeah OK so it's a glorified lunch box from Japan... but still I think it looks utterly spiffing, and will actually provide a really good place to store those game cards. Because lets face it, once they're out of the shrink wrap, cards never fit back into there boxes properly!


The bento box opened up. You even get a plastic spoon, awesome. I'd have personally preferred a spork, the cutlery of kings... or chopsticks, but a spoon will do I guess.


The two limited edition miniatures you get with the Tentacle Bento campaign. On the left we have Marie-Claude Bourbonnais and to the right another version of Soda Pop mascot extraordinaire Candy and Cola, super cute! Both miniatures are one piece casts as you can see, and are rather nice sculpts, although they've clearly put the wrong sized skirts on as they're way too small.


This would be the front of the box. It's colourful and will stand out in a store I'm sure. Hopefully store owners will notice the rather large and prominent 16+ age rating on the front of the box at the lower left corner. It may not be adult themed, or contain mature content, what with most of it being a bit puerile, but it is content that is only really suitable for more mature gamers. So God only knows why I have a copy!!!


On the back the content is again spelled out for anyone who might be offended easily by innuendo and weird Japanese tropes.


The cards, they are colourful, clearly designed and have a nice amount of artwork on them, plus...


...you get a fair few of them!!!






Here's a random selection of the sorts of artwork you'll find on the cards. It's all cutesy anime stylie, and in keeping with the theme.


And if you backed the crowd-funding campaign you also get this rather wicked-awesome foil cards. What is it about foil cards that make grown men so excited? Seriously, I still have a need to own foild cards and foil stickers! Why?


These are the games rules. There's really not too much too them and after a brief read through it seems like a simple enough game to me. Obviously it could all go to pot once I add humans of varying intelligence to the mix, but there's nothing contained within that seems too taxing to me.


There is a small poster of the box art complete with bug eyes, unfeasibly large chests and skirts that are far too short. I'm not going to pretend I understand the culture that spawns such things, far smarter scholars than I have tried and failed. Lets just agree the Japanese see things fairly differently to us westerners shall we?


And here is the second of two posters, this one is much, much bigger than the first one and contains more crotch and pantie shots... plus tentacles, don't forget the tentacles. Sadly for those of you who would have liked to have displayed this in your home, or should I say your parents basement, it has been folded down the middle, so alas it won't look pristine next to your Sports Illustrated calendar!


So what do I think? Well Soda Pop have made it very clear on the box that the game contains content suitable for adults only, and there is a 16+ on the box. Plus the blurb clearly states it's a look at, and a parody of some pretty weird Japanese tropes, and is itself innuendo laden, which flicking though the cards it quite clearly is! I guess what I'm saying is that it is exactly what I expected it to be, a tongue in cheek look at Japanese Hentai culture, and done so with a dash of puerile innuendo. It's not taking itself, or it's subject matter too seriously, but it is certainly not a game about tentacle rape, despite what some would have you believe. We'll see whether or not the game is any good in a few weeks time, I've actually got a number of card games I need to finish off reviewing, so perhaps I should just lump them into a week of card game reviews? Sounds like a plan. I was also treated to some demo games of Z War One by Rob Butler and the guys at Ill Gotten Games yesterday, hopefully I'll have some more news for you on that product shortly. Peace out!

24 comments:

  1. Damn, I miss that kickstarter...reminds me of that days in the past when of the private-owned German TV channels showed one of the earlier Agent AIKA movies and me and my friends tried to keep up with the panty-shot count, while drinking a good amount of alcoholic beverages w/o spilling them on the carpet.

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    1. Well the panty shot count is exceedingly high in Tentacle Bento!!! In fact it's probably easier to count the cards without panty shots.

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  2. I gave this kickstarter a miss, since the last thing I need right now is card game addiction!

    But I'm still looking forward to hearing your thoughts about this! Especially since I know your review won't devolve into "OMIGOT, IT'S A GAME WITH TENTACLES SO IT MUST BE ABOUT RAPE!!!!! WHY WON'T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!"

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    1. No but I might do a panty count!!! :P

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    2. Pff, I watch quite a bit of anime. Plenty more where that came from :p

      Sometimes the only thing you can do is shake your head and mutter "only in Japan"

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    3. Oh yeah, addiction... at least I managed to grab a relic knight kickstarter and nerdy as I am I get most of the SD character puns they made there... stupid brain keeps forgetting the useful stuff, but remembers all kind of senseless trivia...

      Hm, maybe I need to check if some bloke from my club was nerdy enough to buy the tentacle bento stuff. And then do a panty-shot drinking game at our clubs christmas party..each time a panty-shot card is played, the player has to drink a shot of hot christmas punch... :D

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    5. @Aeria... yeah you could say that, but the game was developed in America, by american's ad much of the artwork is done by westerners too. Seems like up skirt panty shots of cartoon girls have become a universal thing o_0

      @Karnstein, you'll all die of liver failure within 6 minutes.

      I also backed Relic Knights. Have they send the survey out yet?

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    6. Agreed, but as the style is deliberately Japanese I stand by my statement ;) Not that I doubt there being any fanservice in the American style comics, but I don't read much of those.

      They didn't do a real survey yet for Relic Knights because of the long wait. Only a small survey where they asked your email and a rough estimate of what you ordered.
      Full explanation here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/relic-knights/posts/314633

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    7. You see I don't think I received that.

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    8. Very odd :s Good thing you notice before the actual survey is send.

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  3. I'll be interesting to see what the games like. I had a bit of a facepalm moment when everybody seeemed to develop into hysteria going "It's all about tentacle rape".

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    1. Well so far I haven't found a single card that talks about forcibly inserting tentacles into any orifices.

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  4. The foils look surprisingly good.

    "although they've clearly put the wrong sized skirts on as they're way too small"

    At work we call this phenomena "shopping in the childrens section" ; P

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    1. The foils are actually a really good quality. Very nice looking.

      As for the skirts, yep, except I think in some cases it was the infants section!!!

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  5. I was actually a bit bothered by this kick-starter project.

    I do like Anime. I do like to look at the female form. I do know that there is a sub-culture of Anime that deals with white panties (heck, there's a whole filme genre about it too). Still... this is like a poor excuse to further lower the standards of our hobby (cue flashbacks to the misoginy article).

    I mean, I know it's tongue in cheeck, but the game seems to cry "It's ok to be pervy, because it's a japanese game and we all know how pervy japanese comics are, don't we?"

    And that's what bothers me. Westerners liking Anime not because of the inherent qualities in the anime itself, but because it's about panties and boobies. And when confronted they blaim japanese culture. "Hey, it's them japs, they are crazy you know. I just like the stories." Like saying you read Playboy just for the articles it rings hollow.

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    1. Leif in a way I agree with everything you've said, and much of that sort of critique will make it into the review. As for it being misogynistic, yeah, it's certainly a possibility. It is also possibly sexist too. However, doing the panty count last night there weren't as many as I thought there would be. I'll judge it for what it is, and Soda Pop have at least made it very clear on the box what it is.

      As for westerners not admitting the anime or manga they like is anything other than softcore porn, or in some cases hardcore porn is just disingenuous. Anime, is just like any other medium, you can tell all sorts of stories with it, historical, fantasy, philosophical debates... and porn.

      Used to annoy me as I sat there watching Nausicaä, Princess Mononoke, or something like Patlabor that people would assume I was watching cartoon porn. Still does, I'd ask anyone who thinks Anime is all about guns and flashes of boobs and pants to watch Tokyo Godfathers. It's utterly brilliant, and I wish more of that sort of anime would make it to the west. Sorry... end rant.

      I'm not so sure the game cries it's OK to be pervy because it's Japanese either. Their are jokes and comments in their from western media too, like the Naked Gun films that show it's not just the Japs who like puerile sexual innuendo:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhyCL-ELRxg

      I'm reserving judgement until I've seen the whole thing, and how it plays and what it's like. But at the very least they get brownie points for saying "hey, this is a 16+ product, because theirs content only really suitable for adults in here". Not many companies in our industry actually say that. Does it damage the image of the industry further? Possibly on the one hand, but on the other it shows a company is willing to produce a product for adults and be big enough to say that's what it is for.

      I have no problem with sexual innuendo, pornography or suchlike on a theoretical level, and I don't really mind whether that comes in card game form, miniature form or via movies on the Internet. What I have issues with is the fact that those things shouldn't be mainstream, and shouldn't permeate into all of our games. I'd be more concerned for instance if these sorts of cards found their way into magic the gathering as something 'normal' rather than being collected in one place and saying "this is what we are".

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    2. You have a couple of points, granted.

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    3. Every now and then I try to make sense, and raise good points. Anime and Manga do not necessarily = porn. Just like movies don't necessarily = porn. It's also disingenuous of us all in the West to say well it's those pervy Japs who have all the fetishes. Take the school girl fetish. You can't tell me that doesn't exist in the West as well. Wall into any Anne Summers store or sex shop and you'll see 'mature' school girl outfits.

      Nothing is seedy unless we make it so, I was once told. I think that point of view has some merit. I think part of the problem we have in the West with such products is that we associate certain media with certain types of output. I remember the outcry when anime first made it to Europe and the States in large enough quantities for people to notice.

      The shock was that the Japanese would design cartoons, which are for kids because Walt Disney told us so, with guns and violence and sex!!! There were parents in the Daily Mail reporting outrage that they'd brought 18 certificate films for little Johnny who was 12. It's deprived I tell you!!! But it clearly states 18 on the box, so why did you buy it? Well it's a cartoon and they're for kids...

      So can card games also be for an adult only audience? Yeah, I think so. Just say that's what it is for, be honest about your product and we're golden. The issue with our industry is that it at times feels like we're watching an epic fantasy movie like the LotR films and then mid way through we see two naked female Elves getting it on was Gandalf while 70's slap base guitar plays... erm... so it's a bit like watching HBO's Game of Thrones... o_0

      For me we need to label and define what our products are from the start. One product can't simultaneously be child friendly My Little Pony's, Gritty political thriller like Syriana, sci-fi horror like Aliens and hard core porn like Debby does Dallas. That's sort of the problem with our games and industry right now. We don't draw the lines. We don't say this is for this type of game, and this is for that type of game. So we have half naked Witch Elves rubbing shoulders comedy type Labyrinth Goblins.

      We need to get more mature as a hobby about accepting that as a medium we can be many things. The fact so much product is saturating the market now will help with that I hope, as people try to find their 'niche'. Rather than some all encompassing monolithic product that tries to be everything to everyman, while being nothing to no one!

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  6. Sell me your Candy and Cola figure.

    That figure was the only reason I thought about getting this as the game doesn't interest me in the slightest, but ultimatley I decided, NOPE! I'm not buy all that just for one figure.

    LOL, if anyone has one to sell, let me know.

    -Voidsign-

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    1. Sorry both have already been cleaned up and primed and are sitting on my painting table with some base coats on them. I don't think there was an option to add further mini's once the campaign went to Soda Pops own website, so I think you'll be hard pressed to find one.

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  7. Hi, I know this was written almost a year ago and I hope you will be notified of this comment so you will see it. I have only just come across this game and I am trying to find it.

    I am a little confused - the kickstarter was supposedly cancelled due to the sexual content. However you obviously received one of the rewards so I was wondering if you could give me some more information as I think a friend would love this game!

    You can email me through my profile. Thanks for your time

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    1. Hi mate the games pretty easy to get. Here's an amazon link:

      http://www.amazon.com/Soda-Pop-Miniatures-SPM30001-Tentacle/dp/B00ALTYRT0/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

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